Apple Mail suddenly beach balling

[BKDad]

About two weeks ago, I started having problems with the Apple Mail app. For no particular reason that I could see, it'd display the beach ball and very often become non responsive, requiring a Force Quit. Usually, that would get things going again. But, sometimes the beach ball start again.

Aside from the normal Apple security updates, nothing was added to the computer in that time. It's kind of a mystery.

The computer is a Mac Studio just about a year old. The operating system is the very latest - Sonoma 14.6.1. My two email providers are iCloud and one of the ATT variants run by Yahoo - both IMAP connections.

So far, here's what I've tried:

• macOS Safe Boot
• Mail safe start (start Mail with the shift key held down)
• Resetting Apple Mail's junk database
• Rebuilding the mailboxes
• Running EtreCheck to see if there was anything going on that shouldn't be
• Deleting the IMAP accounts and reconnecting

None seemed to have helped. These accounts have been set-up for a very long time with no changes. I've moved almost all messages from the Inbox to a folder on the Mac as archives, so there is only about a half dozen messages in the Inbox.

Anybody else seeing this problem? Any other suggestions? The nice people at Apple have been, well, nice, but they haven't had any workable solutions. Wiping the drive and starting new is their last suggestion, but that isn't entirely appealing.

 

[Fishrrman]

I, too, have an ATT-based account hosted on Yahoo's servers.

Every now and then, it just seems to act up. Often, trying various things "at my end" makes no difference -- eventually, whatever's going on will "clear" on its own. It can be frustrating -- enough to make you want to chew on your keyboard (see avatar)...

I would suggest that you try going to the Internet Accounts settings pane, and (once more) try deleting your att/yahoo account, and then RE-create it.

Another thought...
If you sign on to your att/yahoo email VIA A WEBPAGE (not through "Mail.app"), can you interact with email easily that way?
Not that you would want to do this regularly (I don't care for web-based email), but "just to see if it's working" without beachballs or other problems?

I've found the easiest way to get there is through "currently.com".

 

[BKDad]

I've deleted and recreated the Yahoo based account a couple times of late. That seems to work for a while. Then, randomly, things go stupid.

The same email accounts on my iPad don't seem to be as affected, even with the very same settings. The iPad's Mail application may just be more resilient and just gives up on whatever instead of becoming non responsive. I'm not sure if there even is an equivalent of the spinning beach ball in iPadOS or iOS.

But, I suspect that it might just be something to do with Yahoo that I have no control over, as you suggest. Just wanted to see if others were having the same issue and perhaps had a miracle cure.

And, yes, the web based portal on currently.com seems to be completely reliable. That just may show what their priorities are. I hate the web portal, too...

Thanks again for your suggestions and observations.

 

[gilby101]

But, I suspect that it might just be something to do with Yahoo that I have no control over, as you suggest.

Yahoo does have a reputation for being "difficult". Do the beach balls disappear if you delete the account, but keep the iCloud one?

 

[BKDad]

Yahoo does have a reputation for being "difficult". Do the beach balls disappear if you delete the account, but keep the iCloud one?

I didn't try that, but I will.

My latest experiment is somewhat off the usual approach.

I was reading "Take Control of Apple Mail" by Joe Kissell again, and focused on how to speed up Mail. One of his suggestions was to manually set the network DNS servers to use CloudFlare. I was pretty sure that I had done that, but I wanted to confirm that something hadn't gone wrong. So, I went into System Settings and had a look. Indeed, my DNS selection was:

1.1.1.1
1.0.0.1
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

The latter being Google's, which I'd put in there as a belt and suspenders type of thing.

But, I thought I'd dump Google as an experiment. I deleted those two from the list.

Well...

No beach balling since I did that this morning.

Now, I have no way to know what order Sonoma chooses DNS servers. Top of the list to the bottom? Who knows? So, I don't know which DNS server the computer had been using. Plus, once it starts using one server, does it stick with it until there's a problem?

It could be easily be that some preference file of some kind, somewhere, somehow got corrupted and editing the list fixed that.

I could have uncovered a plot by Google to damage Yahoo by giving bad DNS lookups.

Or, it could just be coincidence that things worked better today and they could go back to being a problem tomorrow. The last one I'll discover tomorrow.

But, I will say that moving messages into the trash goes much faster now.

OT: I wish that I wouldn't lose the cursor every so often when composing messages like this one in Safari. Very annoying.

 

[gilby101]

My understanding of DNS lookups is that the addresses are used randomly, possibly with bias towards those with lower response time. And that if a lookup fails with one, it will try the others.

Private Relay may come into the mix. Mine is OFF because I use a commercial consumer VPN service.

In the end, you have to inspect network packets and that is not for the faint hearted!

Hope your email continues ok!

 

[BKDad]

There's also a DNS cache, which I plain forgot about until your comment. A long time ago I'd written a very simple AppleScript to clear that cache. Easier than using a Terminal command...

I just tried using it.

Based on a very small sample of messages and it being a Monday and all that, I found that deleting messages is now *much* faster. Conclusive? No. But, it's worth trying for a while.

So, I added it to the Applescripts folder for Mail to make it easily accessible when using Mail.

Thanks very much for your suggestions.